Head coach Claude Julien today explained that there are reasons for the way he and his staff divided up the players.

“The roster that we made a lot of it was that I tried to mix veterans with younger players. What that allows is the younger players to at least showcase their talent instead of putting three young guys against three veterans,” said the coach. “It’s a little unfair. You want to give those players an opportunity to showcase what they’re capable of doing and they can probably do that if they’re surrounded with guys that are a little more experienced. So what we try to do is use that and this year you saw [Dougie] Hamilton with [Zdeno] Chara and I think he’s a guy with great potential being a first-round pick and he can benefit playing with Zdeno. And you saw other guys too we’ve paired up with some that we feel guys that can be on each side of them whether it’s a centermen or winger that’ll either dish them the puck or that will be able to dish the puck. Offensively that will really be able to see their skill level at the NHL level. And some of the guys were good passers we sometimes put those guys with guys that are good shooters, so they can pass the puck to those guys.

“The other part of the team [building] was to try to balance them out the best we could. As you know we have a black and white game in Providence, and I want to try to balance the teams out the best way we could and at least make that an interesting game when it comes time to that. So we try to do both those things in order to make it an interesting and good camp.”